All Rise...

Editor's Note

The Charge

Let's go sexin'!

Opening Statement

A Dirty Shame promises the return of "old school" John
Waters. It is slapped with an NC-17 rating, stars Jackass legend Johnny
Knoxville, and has a tag line that states "out to threaten the very limits
of common decency." For years, hardcore Waters fans have accused the
once-guerrilla filmmaker of selling out to glossy Hollywood fluff. In the past,
he got Divine to eat dog excrement off a Baltimore street, and showcased a
singing asshole at a barbecue outside a trailer home. Then came musicals with
Johnny Depp, Ricki Lake as his new muse, and a parade of stars who seemed
unwilling to go to the lengths Waters and his crew regularly did back in their
halcyon days outside the studio system. But it's true—the hippies became
yuppies, and Waters became a Hollywood icon with a hit Broadway musical. Will
A Dirty Shame resurrect the revolution that started with Pink Flamingos, or are we in for just
another rehash of Cecil B. Demented?
Will it be as tasteless and nasty as Desperate Living, or are we in for
another twee, sweet ride like Pecker?

Facts of the Case

A Dirty Shame treads on familiar John Waters ground. Sylvia Stickles
(Tracey Ullman) is a prudish convenience store worker living in Baltimore's
Hartford Road area. She has a somewhat happy (if undersexed) marriage with her
hubby (Chris Isaak, Fire Walk With Me), and trouble with her
surrealistic, big-breasted, go-go dancing daughter (Selma Blair, Hellboy). The neighborhood falls into turmoil
as the residents realize a perverse element is moving into the serene
suburb—lesbians, nudists, and bears, oh my! Sylvia and her co-worker Big
Ethel are planning a rally for decency, and encourage other "neuters"
to join their cause. But then Sylvia gets hit on the head by a lawn mower on a
truck that passes her after she is stranded without gas. The bump on her melon
throws her libido into overdrive, and a tow truck driver named Ray Ray (Johnny
Knoxville) shows up to "service" her. Soon Sylvia realizes she is a
sex addict, and proclaims herself a cunnilingus "bottom." Ray Ray is
revealed as a sexual savior who is assembling twelve apostles to preach the
perverse gospel of sexual fetish freedom to the horny masses. He realizes Sylvia
is his twelfth apostle, and tells her she will invent a new sex act that will
win the revolution for them. But can Sylvia stay a sex addict when Big Ethel,
the other neuters, and her husband are out to cure her before it's too late?

The Evidence

A Dirty Shame ends up being a perverse mix of good old fashioned
trademark Waters gross out and his new aesthetic of Hollywood slickness and
subservience. It is not a return to form as so many hoped, but it's also a lot
more edgy than some of his previous efforts. It's a new hybrid of the old John
with the new Waters. It has many joyous moments to counterbalance the
disappointment of realizing nobody can ever really go home again—even when
you never left Baltimore. It's a movie that happily takes its place as the
bridge between Hairspray and Pink Flamingos. The real burning
question we're left with is—who will be happiest with it?

The good news is it's a raunchy time, with wit and plain juvenile humor
mixed together in a messy fetish exploitation film. Waters was surprised with
the NC-17 rating for his self-proclaimed "cunnilingus comedy," since
there are no true sex scenes to be found anywhere in A Dirty Shame. The
rating came about primarily because of the constant sexual talk between the
characters. You'll learn terms you never wanted to know, like "Roman
shower," "plate job," "blossom," and
"mesophilia." To catalog or define any of these terms would ruin half
the fun of watching the movie—but trust me. no matter how twisted you
think you are, you'll never see some of these coming in a million years. Waters
has done extensive research on fetishes, and he's all too happy to share what
he's found. His merry band of sex addicts have something up their sleeve to
freak out everyone, and they do it in a safe innocuous way that will still leave
you reeling at the absurdity of what some people will do to get off. It really
is the "Noah's Ark" of perversity—I couldn't recall a fetish
that isn't called out to in some way, shape, or fashion.

The cast is one of the best Waters has ever assembled, and they are having
an orgy of good times. Johnny Knoxville is freaking brilliant in this film.
Waters courted him for years after seeing him on Jackass; his devotion
and affection for Johnny paid off in the end result. This is the movie that will
go down in history as the moment Mr. Knoxville transitioned from sideshow stunt
carnie to bona fide leading man. He's sexy and funny, and a force to be reckoned
with as Ray Ray. You'll never forget the finale scene when his trouser snake
appears and he prepares for his big cum shot. Tracey Ullman is
hilarious—and the perfect Waters heroine, because she is fearless. Whether
she's acting morally outraged, or picking up water bottles with her vagina in an
old folks home, she commits 110 percent. I giggled when she even provides the
demonic voice to her own pussy in an homage to the talking cervix classic
Chatterbox. Selma Blair may have been a mutant in Hellboy, but here she gets to sport a
blockbuster set of jugs that would make Pam Anderson feel extremely
flat-chested. Blair is having a ball with her boobs, and her fun is infectious.
Suzanne Shepherd (The Sopranos, Requiem for a Dream) gives an inspired
turn as Big Ethel, even though legend has it that she almost had a nervous
breakdown when she first read the script. Chris Isaak shows that he can handle
almost anything by appearing as the poor schlub stuck in the middle of all this
madness. All the usual suspects line up for brief appearances in A Dirty
Shame, to: Mink Stole, Patricia Hearst, Ricki Lake, Mary Vivian Pierce, and
a whole host of Waters regulars too numerous to name.

The DVD New Line has produced for A Dirty Shame is fully loaded with
extras. First up is a feature-length featurette on the movie, which clocks in at
over an hour and twenty minutes. It is exhaustive in its depth, and covers cast
and crew quite nicely. Also included are two commentaries, even though the box
only lists one. John Waters is absolutely one of the best commentary artists in
the business, and he does a hysterical narration of his own film that you can't
skip. He's done commentaries for every one of his movies, and they are always
worth the price of the DVD. In addition to the Waters commentary, we also get an
unusual commentary from the heads of the production departments, who relate
their takes on the film without it being shown to them. Oddly, they have edited
it so well that is often screen-specific without the participants even having
seen the end movie. Trailers and some DVD-ROM features round out the disc,
including a script-to-screen comparison and a glossary of dirty terms.

The transfer is solid. I doubt Waters uses high-tech or expensive film stock
or cameras, and he often shoots on the fly. So some of the film looks a little
off, but it is never the fault of the fine transfer, which offers few problems.
The sound mix is a robust surround track that works well either in stereo or
full surround.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Are you ready for the bad news? With all this raving you might think I am
proclaiming this "The best John Waters film ever!" I am a long-time
fan, and I certainly enjoyed the heck out of A Dirty Shame, but it has
its flaws. The script has two problems. First off, it feels like a retread of Cecil B. Demented, with fetish
enthusiasts substituted for film freaks. The whole sequence in Ray Ray's hideout
(and the idea of the sexual liberators) has a deja vu feeling in that it
hearkens back to Cecil introducing Melanie Griffith to his gang. The second
problem is exactly like the Waters film it imitates: A Dirty Shame
overstays its welcome and has a lackluster ending. I felt Cecil B.
Demented fell apart in the last sequence, and damned if this one doesn't do
exactly the same thing. Waters always seems to come up with an outrageous
set-up, only to paint himself into a corner with no real ending. The film runs a
brief eighty-eight minutes, but it still feels awfully long in the tooth once it
limps across the finish line.

A Dirty Shame will divide both camps of John Waters fans. The people
who love the more commercial films, like Hairspray, Pecker or Serial Mom, will find this too crude and
puerile for their tastes. And the people rallying for another Pink Flamingos or Female Trouble
will find it too restrained. It won't end up as a musical, but it still feels
safer than efforts from the early days. Back when the Dreamland crew made
guerrilla movies, they were all fearless. Actors would appear in sex scenes, and
there was a feeling nothing was sacred. But here, all the dangerous material is
left to the peripheral characters. Chris Isaak, Selma Blair, and Tracey Ullman
seem to be sealed in a bubble that prevents them from having to do any nudity or
anything remotely gross for real (aside from Ullman's bottle trick). Waters has
basically cow-towed to celebrity demands, when he really should be terrorizing
them with threats of "Eat this now or leave my movie!" This movie
offers us too little of the charm of Waters mainstream movies, and not enough of
the gross carnie atmosphere of his earliest efforts. In trying to appease
everyone it becomes too middle of the road. The only fans who will wholly
embrace the aesthetic are the ones who love everything he does, no matter
what.

And now for the infamous and dreaded two versions warning. A Dirty
Shame will be released in two cuts—the original all-out theatrical
version, and a "sanitized for your protection" edition for Blockbuster
and Wal-Mart. Check your boxes carefully, because I know of no John Waters fan
who would want the "neuter-approved" copy. I imagine most of the cuts
will have to be around some of the more blue dialogue, and some scenes will be
missing their payoff. Also gone will be the occasional flashes of full frontal
male and female nudity (all bit players—giggle at the irony). The R-rated
cut will be approved by Waters, but it will certainly only be a ploy to get the
major retail chains to carry the film. Maybe to avoid confusion they should call
the edit A Not so Dirty Shame. Nothing like some big corporations to
enforce censorship. Grrrrr!

Closing Statement

What's an aging revolutionary filmmaker to do? A Dirty Shame is a
strange brew of the perverse and the safe, and really shows the crossroads that
John Waters has come to. When Divine ate dog doo in a street at the end of Pink Flamingos, the whole world gagged
with him as he revealed his turd-eating grin. Several decades later, we've seen
it all. Waters could conceivably even blame his leading man from this movie,
Johnny Knoxville, for pushing the gross envelope to the stratosphere it's
reached. Waters has always made outsider films that spoke to outsider culture,
but now he is finally firmly planted in the inner circle of his own icon. He can
only produce something like A Dirty Shame, which rests on the edge but
never quite sets new highs in absurdity or gross-out. For that you need a new
generation, like Trey Parker and Matt Stone, or whoever else comes along to
claim the old "Filthiest Person Alive" title that used to follow
John's name. He's stuck somewhere between two worlds, and his credibility now
stops him from ever again going gonzo.

But here's the thing. Even with its flaws, A Dirty Shame is an
entertaining movie with an agenda. The MPAA was so outraged with the film, it
said that the film would end up being 10 minutes long if it were cut down to get
an "R" rating. It's not that over the top, and God bless John
Waters for making a movie this sex-crazed in the middle of the Bush years (no
fair giggling at that double entendre). Even if Waters has been upstaged by
Jackass and South Park, he is still pushing buttons. Even decades
after he has gone mainstream, he recognizes how silly and uptight America really
is. We need him now more than ever, and that makes this silly little sex comedy
elevated in cultural significance. It may not be as audacious and outrageous as
Pink Flamingos, but it's still pissing off a lot of prudish people. And I
have to tilt my glass to the man for that.

I had a really good time with A Dirty Shame despite its flaws. It's
funny, it's gross, and it marks the first appearance of CGI effects in a Waters
film. The movie is a natural progression for the man as an artist. It's not
perfect, but it is assured. Despite the fact that many people are cruder, Waters
knows how to handle his own material. When the movie fires on all cylinders it
hums like a well-oiled machine; if it sputters, it's still enjoyable in some
strange way. Waters experimenting and not quite succeeding is far more
interesting than most other directors hitting the nail on the head. A Dirty
Shame is not the prophesized "second coming," but it is a return
to form in many ways. It's the cross-breeding of old and new Waters that makes
it fascinating.

A Dirty Shame is fine naughty fun when you're in the right mood or
frame of mind. It certainly isn't for everyone—but after decades of films,
you should know where you stand with Waters by now. The cast is awesome, the
jokes are raunchy, and thanks to all its fetish glee, you can forgive the weak
finish. I don't doubt one day John Waters will reclaim his title as the ultimate
purveyor of filth on the planet, but until he does this one is a fine way to
bide your time. It's a mixed bag of filth and fluff, but nobody can deliver this
kind of stuff with as much panache as Waters and this cast. It's a whole lot of
fun no matter how you slice it.

The Verdict

A Dirty Shame is guilty of being a nasty little joke that prattles on
a little too long without a climax, but it's also the grossest, funniest thing
Waters has produced in many a year. The cast is sentenced to probation for lewd
behavior, and Selma Blair needs to do community service for those big hooters
she teases us with. New Line gives us a sexy transfer and loads of extras, so
they're off the hook completely. Now let's get out of this stuffy courthouse and
all…GO SEXIN'!